


you will learn

by martryn



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Study, Death, Gen, Grief, Loss, Moral Ambiguity, Pain, i don't know where its going or how to write it down, spirituality, this is a really hard story for me to tell tbh, we'll see how it goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 17:11:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15689790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martryn/pseuds/martryn
Summary: the things you will see, the things you will learn; you will know them, and in turn, they will also know you





	you will learn

_there is nothing for a long time, and then she wakes_

_the first thing she sees is light_

      --  **in memory** , unknown

 

 

The firsts of her lives are relatively calm, and free of strife.

In them, she comes to learn many things.

 

In the first, she learns to walk, to breathe, to feel the world around her with nothing more than herself and her own two hands.  Her mother teaches her how to chew and eat her food, how to calm her tears when her heart feels too overwhelmed, and she holds her hand to keep her steady while she balances on the rock wall by the roadside as they walk into town. 

Her father teaches her words and letters, how to count the seconds as the clock passes on in a constant, steady rhythm. His hunts put food on the table, and the money he makes in his job is enough to keep them warm, healthy,  _happy_.

She passes her life in this way, slow and sure.

 

It ends with her dying in her sleep.

Old, and alone.

 

But she's happy.

 

 

\---

 

 

_...right?_

 

 

\---

 

 

The next few are harder.

 

They are a little rougher around their edges, and even less kind; but she endures.

In them, she learns what it means to go hungry, to walk with weaker legs, and see with blurred vision in damaged eyes. Her chest hitches with every other breath, and she can't run as fast as she did before, tires more frequently, but she struggles through it all just to feel that happiness again.

Her mother is proud of her, and her father is too long dead to feel anything otherwise.

 

She doesn't grow old.

 

She still dies in her sleep, but she's barely ten years old when it happens.

In her wake, she leaves behind a sickly mother and her newborn brother.

 

She never learns what happened to them, after that.

 

But she prays for their well-being, and hopes they made it through.

 

 

\---

 

 

_...but somehow, she knows they didn't._

 

 

\---

 

 

Somewhere along the line, things made a turn for the worse.

 

Her lives, now, are of a bitter strain and begin to fill with a darkness that she will come to know intimately thoughout the years to come.

In those that follow, she learns the harsh realities of life. The heavy hands of her drunken father, the cold disdain of a family who never could love her; of the cruelty of men, subjugated to their greedy whims and violent desires. 

She goes through them all with an unfeeling certainty of an end, and lets it come to her in whichever way it decides.

 

She dies of cold, of hunger, of fear and abandonment.

In a few, she barely takes her first breath before it is smothered by the universe in a dying **scream**.

 

In one, a man beats her bloody and raw and uses her, again and again and  _again_ , before her soul cracks apart and she wishes herself away just to escape it.

 

But in the end, they're all the same.

 

Lessons to be learned;

One, at a time...

 

 

\---

 

 

She remembers each one.

 

 

\---

 

 

And it's at this point, she starts to realise something is  _wrong_...

 

Very wrong, indeed.

 

 

\---

 

 

Once, she wakes up as a bird.

 

And she's sitting in a tree, nestled on a branch; her feathers ruffled, because its the middle of winter and it is very cold, and she is all alone...

 

That's when she sees  _her_.

 

Just walking by, quiet, unassuming, with a basket full of berries and mushrooms and various other fauna.

A belt of dead rabbits strung up by their feet hang from a belt on her right hip; perhaps for eating later, like tonight, warm and safe inside, with a fire and a big bed and her nimble feet curled up under a fur blanket, pale lashes wide around her dark eyes and the flames flickering, casting shadows on the wall---

 

 

\---

 

 

This, right here, is where it begins.

 

 

\---

 

 

And it never really ends, after that.

 

_At least,_ _not in the way it should..._

**Author's Note:**

> a rough cut of a story i've been writing for years, but have never told


End file.
